The sun was beating down on the apartment on a Sunday afternoon. It made the sofa scorching hot and my glass of water sickly tepid. I wasn't doing much, just lying on that sofa, feeling just as tepid about life as that glass of water.
Too much conflict in the head. Too many regrets in life. Too many words left unsaid.
I learnt about regret in Cognitive Psychology; it's called counterfactual thinking. The words 'counterfactual thinking' is almost self-explanatory - it is thoughts which counter facts (duh) - about things which did not happen, but yet we wished had happened.
With counterfactual thinking, we'd consider the possibility that there were other paths we could have gone down had we done something differently. Maybe we could have rephrased something we said or taken ten seconds less to tie our shoelace as we were leaving to catch a train. Maybe...maybe...maybe...
Obviously, and unfortunately, you only consider all this in hindsight, so by then it would have been too late to have done anything.
Yeah...maybe you shouldn't have bothered to tie your shoelaces this morning...
...or said those words you said. Maybe you should have chosen to say something else or not say anything at all.
Feeling a little silly now, aren't we, spending so much time thinking about things which haven't happened. But yet we still play this stupid game with ourselves and by ourselves. We wish we could forget but it plays around and around in our heads like a broken tape recorder with OCD tendencies.
Before you know it, the sun had gone down and you're left on a couch which, by now, has braved enough heat to stay warm for the rest of the night. Too bad that's the only comfort you have as you're left with the hangover of a whirring, worried head..
The water is still tepid; you feel like shit; I will keep playing that broken tape recorder.
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